


The Scientific Method

by aTableofGreen



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blueberries, First Kiss, I guess there's a bit of, M/M, Science, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros, also, cardiology, laboratory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aTableofGreen/pseuds/aTableofGreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bruce lights upon a major personal discovery, Tony helps him test his theory and makes a few discoveries of his own along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bruce could feel him making his way back again in slow motion. Like a drowning man, searching directionlessly for the breach of the horizon. Normally, he took full advantage of this window between the distant tremor of his approach and the chaos to follow for a feeble attempt at damage control. He would put up red hazard flags and aim the other guy’s frantic strokes away from the beach. But this time, he pointed him toward the sky and let go.

The sound of Tony’s iron clad body slamming against the wall of the lab was the sort of cacophony you might expect to be accompanied by squealing tires and a chorus of car horns. For a moment, the normally vibrant blue luminance in the suit’s palms sputtered out. Even the arc reactor at its core hitched slightly before flickering back to life with a slow and steady hum. Propping himself up off the floor with one arm, Tony gawked through his open faceplate at the sight across the room.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” The words began with sturdy resolve, but trailed off as Bruce faltered at the uncanny sound of his own voice. His eyes darted from the crumpled tin man on the floor to the still outstretched hands before him. The knuckles bulged awkwardly in an almost childish exaggeration of the human form and the familiar mossy green tone blossomed across the skin through pulsating veins. The sight of the gruesome appendages was not unfamiliar to him, but the presence of mind he now felt looking down at them didn’t quite match the scene.

“Why?” Tony interrupted his contemplation. “Won’t I like you when you’re angry?” he asked with a smirk. His mocking tone flirted with more than just Bruce, and they both knew it. Bruce braced for blackout, but opened his eyes to find his natural hands trembling and pale, holding him up against the table. Tony laughed. “What’s the matter? Losing your green thumb over there, Secret Garden?” He was upright again and brushing the drywall off his shimmery bits. Bruce stammered slightly.

“I don’t understand. Did I?” Tony shook his head. “But how?” He spun around the table and began feverishly taking notes on one of the lab’s many vibrant monitors. Tony raised an eyebrow and approached to read over Bruce’s shoulder.

“Carrot juice?” he puzzled.

“My breakfast,” Bruce replied without looking away from his work. “I’m logging everything I’ve eaten today as well as physical exertion, meteorological activity, sun exposure, and stress levels to search for anomalies. Can JARVIS run a chemical survey of the atmospheric makeup in here?” Tony reached forward as a chorus of mechanical arms proceeded to remove his armor and placed a hand on the frantic scientist’s shoulder.

“Whoa there, Big Guy. I’ve never seen you this far from Zen in a natural hue before. What’s going on?” Bruce stopped typing abruptly and turned to face him.

“That's what I'm trying to work out. Tony, don’t you understand? This has never happened before.” His trembling voice seemed to fluctuate between terrified and ecstatic. “It was happening! You saw my hands!”

“I sure as Hell felt your hands,” Tony muttered.

“Exactly!” Without thinking, he suddenly grabbed Tony’s face with both hands. “It was definitely happening and it stopped!” Bruce spun back around and continued to log the details of his daily intake as he spoke. “This is my chance to figure it out! Something made it stop and, if I can find out what it was, maybe I can find a way to put the brakes on the Big Guy!”  
It took Tony a moment to register the gravity of the situation Bruce had described because his thoughts were derailed by the sensation of Bruce’s natural hands against his cheeks. Somehow, in that moment, they dished out far more impact than the green ones ever could.

The next morning, Tony attempted to relate the unusual situation to the rest of the super clan without flinging too much scrambled egg mess off his wildly gesticulating fork in the process. Such efforts were ultimately in vain. Clint flicked a bit of yellow mush off his arm, which promptly settled itself in Thor's flowing blonde locks.

"What were you doing prodding him in the first place?" Clint was going for a scathing tone, but when Thor spoke up next, his voice shrunk into more of a chirp.

"By the gods, you fool!" The speck of egg previously flung into Thor's face from across the table was swiftly joined by a smattering of more half-eaten breakfast as he spoke. "Know you not the danger lurking within our oft emerald companion?"

"You really should be more careful around him, Tony," Steve contributed with an air of peace-keeping authority. "Your jokes aren't worth putting everyone's safety at risk." Tony shot him a vicious glare.

"First of all, Mr. Propaganda, being poster boy for Old Glory doesn't give you top billing and it sure as hell ain't a Constitutional right to order me around. I don't know if you've noticed, but the 'A' on this tower isn't for 'America,' in fact, it's not even for 'Avengers!' You wouldn't be able to spell shit if it weren't for the 'A' in 'Stark!'"

"Is there an 'a' in this 'shit' of which he speaks?" Thor muttered to Clint, who could manage little more through his sputtering laughter than to close his eyes and shake his head. Natasha glanced up at him over her toast only to roll her eyes and return, undisturbed, to her meal. Steve had clenched his fists under the table, but relaxed them upon meeting Natasha's ambivalent eye. This wasn't worth a fight over breakfast. As the tension dissipated, Tony looked back up at Steve.

"Look, I know Bruce can be a little volatile, but clearly so can we." Had the words not come directly from Tony Stark, Steve might have mistaken their tone as apologetic. Tony's eyes flashed around the room at each of his companions. "There's no reason we should treat him like a bomb instead of a damn human being when we trust the company of a fucking god at our breakfast table." Thor, taking little note of the reference to his presence in conversation, slammed his coffee cup onto now dented table and proceeded to shovel a twelfth helping of hashbrowns onto his plate. Tony raised an eyebrow at him and continued, "Hell, Bruce is the reason we can accommodate a god at our breakfast table! Just think how many coffee cups we'd have gone through by now if he hadn't found a way to reinforce titanium into that Asgard-strength stein. We brought him on as a scientist, so how about you all try respecting him as one?"

"Of course we respect Bruce," Clint replied. Natasha, clearly having held back some simmering frustrations, fielded the response on this one.

"Then why don't you try being happy for him at what is clearly a personal breakthrough rather than condemning Tony for helping him get there?" She spoke calmly, but her words conveyed the impact across the table. Tony nodded to her as he got up.

"Thank you."

 

Tony returned to the lab to find Bruce still hunkered over a series of luminescent screens and keyboards, no doubt running a myriad of tests on both himself and everything around him. He watched quietly as Bruce's eyes darted from monitor to monitor. Though focused under a furrowed brow, Tony could see the glimmer of hope sparkling behind his determined grimace. Bruce's fingers raced across the blue glow of the instruments before him and, for a moment, Tony couldn't help imagining them illuminated by his own reactor, gently tracing the outline of his heart until the pulse in his fingertips synchronized with the hum of Tony's mechanical life force. For once, a machine in the caring hands of a scientist out to do more than simply keep him running.

"Oh, Tony! I didn't see you come in!" Bruce looked up with a gentle smile. JARVIS, ever at the ready, smoothly caught the glass beaker Tony knocked off its stand on his way back to reality. He muttered something incoherent, but with what he hoped were enough grandiose hand gestures to keep his facade of control going. There was something mildly threatening about another man handling his most complex lab equipment so effortlessly, but whether it was jealous intimidation or that unlikely twinge of admiration accented here and there with a touch of lust, Tony would never admit.

Fortunately, Bruce was enthralled deeply enough with his work that he didn't seem to register Tony's flubbed entrance. Instead, he simply waved his fellow scientific mind over to the panel he was analyzing. A portion of his thoughts were still distracted by his fleeting fantasy and what such a thought could mean, but Tony regained his focus and sauntered over to Bruce.

"What do you make of this?" Bruce asked the question with the kind of smile that meant he already knew and couldn't wait for Tony to see it as well. Tony rested his hands on his hips absentmindedly and blinked too many times before registering what he was looking at.

"This is an EKG," was all Tony could manage before Bruce excitedly cut him off.

"It's my EKG. See the frequency of these QRS waves?" Tony tried to point out that the waves themselves didn't appear to display any sort of anomaly when Bruce hurriedly continued, pointing across Tony's nose at the monitor. "They don't appear to display any sort of anomaly themselves! It's just a normal heartbeat. Heightened, yes. But normal." Bruce paused for Tony's response but Tony, having learned his lesson, merely gestured for him to go on. "See, when I change, my heart grows just as much as the rest of my body to keep the blood flow strong enough to reach the farthest parts of the peripheral vessels. In the transition, the electrical impulses acting on the myocardium go through a series of various wavering anomalies; essentially shorts in the wiring as the circuit is suddenly stretched. These are the readings from the moment right before you pulled your little stunt through the following ten minutes. See?" Bruce traced the line with a finger as he spoke. Tony struggled to actively avoid the sight of the enthusiastic scientist's slender fingertip illuminated blue by the monitor. "There's this sudden spike in heart rate, but no change in the functional communication between the SA and AV nodes. That means the transition that began in my hands never made it through to my internal organs. I kept full control of my heart!" Beaming, Bruce turned back to face Tony who, smiling and nodding supportively, processed the realization that he had completely lost control of his.

 

Bruce couldn't help being a little disappointed that Tony's mind seemed to be elsewhere as he shared his findings. He had expected Tony to be the only person who could truly appreciate, not only the science involved, but what a marvellous step this could be in his life. He wanted to share it with someone who cared for him as a scientist rather than feared him as a science experiment and that someone had to be Tony. When he sensed that Stark had turned to walk away, Bruce stole a glance behind only to catch a spark of fierce contemplation in Tony's eye. Fearing he may leave the lab entirely, Bruce continued to narrate his process aloud in the hopes of keeping Tony engaged. The last thing he wanted now was to be left in peace, but his general countenance had a tendency of sending the solitary message despite his best efforts to the contrary. Tony's consistent disregard for this message was another aspect of their relationship Bruce found himself ultimately grateful for.

He was relieved when Tony reentered his line of sight opposite his workspace. The transparent hologram of the monitor floating between them seemed to imbue the suave playboy's eye with extra layer of chic, effortless seduction. He appeared to be tinkering casually with an upgrade to his suit's weaponry, but Bruce knew Tony had worked out all the kinks in that project the week prior. He smiled to think Tony might be pretending to have work to occupy him so that he would have the excuse to stay in the lab. When Tony looked up from his "work" and their eyes met, Bruce's cheeks flushed pink for a moment, as though afraid Tony had heard his thoughts. Even hidden behind the computer's projected charts and calculations, the billionaire's glance sent shivers through Bruce to rival a holiday in Loki's home town. His mind wandered off to ponder how much heat that suit conducts from the propulsion engines in flight and whether that heat radiated off the outer shields. An image of himself in mid-air, arms wrapped tightly around Tony's gently warmed iron cased body floated through his mind. Surprised to suddenly be caught up in such an unusual train of thought, Bruce shook his head and returned to his statistical analyses.

"Now, what I'd really like to do is compare these event readings with a similar case. I keep feeling as though I'm on the verge of working this out, but there's simply nothing to go on if I can't recreate the readings in multiple trials." As Bruce spoke, Tony set down his tools and moved closer. He told himself it was just to get a better look at the information on the hologram between them, but who was he kidding? It wasn't even worth the effort to pretend he could read the mirrored text from the wrong side of the console. Bruce glanced up with a gentle smirk, "You might have to sneak up on me again." That was as good an invite as any for Tony. The image between them pixelated and flickered as Tony's hands reached through the hologram to take hold of Bruce. His lips found their destination in a bit of a crash landing, but the unexpectedly sweet taste of lingering chamomile tea in Bruce's helpfully agape mouth made the risky dive worthwhile. Despite the screaming want telling every part of him never to let go, Tony relinquished his grasp and pulled back just as abruptly as he'd gone in.

"Does that help?"

Bruce remained silently motionless long enough for Tony to start to worry he might go green. The only sound was that of the pen in Bruce's hand dropping to the floor. Tony risked a quick glance at the EKG monitor to check for tell-tale anomalies, but the beats were streaming across the readout too quickly to decipher. Tony began to stammer out an apology, but before he could form the words, Bruce had minimized the monitor and was returning the favor, replacing the remorse on Tony's lips with an inviting flick of his tongue. The warmth now blossoming throughout Bruce's body, coupled with the floating sensation of his pure elation in the moment outshined the whisper of a fantasy by more than he could have ever imagined. It was the first time he had felt truly free to let go without fear. Normally, such a sensation would ring warning bells in his mind, but something in the grip of Tony's hand told him he was safe here. He wondered at the taste on Tony's tongue that it seemed to fit just right with the drops of tea on his own. As he set a hand down on the lab table between them to steady himself, the answer rolled between his fingers. In the rush to meet Bruce's lips again, Tony had overturned his bag of blueberries and they now decorated the scene around them, several smashed and sticky under Tony's palm. Forever analysing, Bruce began to worry that he might have some crushed berries on the hand that was now sliding up the nape of Tony's neck. A simple tilt of the head and nudge upward from Tony shattered any remaining concern and Bruce weaved his fingers through the impossibly perfect hair with reckless abandon. The tug at the back of his head invited Tony's mouth to open wider and Bruce's tongue deeper. His rigid jawline was powerfully outlined by Bruce's slowly wandering left hand and Tony's rebellious streak revelled in the messy smear of blueberry juice left to trickle down his neck.

When the two scientists finally came up for air, the sprawling mess scattered across the lab between them consisted primarily of spilt tea, angrily sputtering machinery, and crushed blueberries. Tony ran a finger along Bruce's cheek to wipe off a bit of blueberry he'd managed to smear there in the process. He looked down at the mess between them and then back up at the flushed, blueberry speckled mess before him. With a dazed and breathless smile, Tony licked his nearly bruised lips and could think of nothing more to say than a satisfied murmur; "Hulk smash..."

A muffled voice approaching from outside the lab door jolted them back into reality. Bruce scrambled to right his instruments as Tony snapped his fingers at JARVIS, who sent an arm chair across the room to meet him. The two men froze, hair still a wreck and blueberry stains still adorning Tony's jaw and neck, as the door slid abruptly open.

"Tony? You got anything to eat around here? Nat's found my stash again and..." Clint's voice trailed off as he entered the lab and surveyed the mess. Tony and Bruce barely breathed for fear they'd been found out in a situation they'd barely had time to processes for themselves. Without even looking up, Clint picked up the empty blueberry bag crushed on the floor and sighed, "Aww, blueberries..." Tony and Bruce glanced at one another from across the console. Bruce silently blessed Clint's one-track mind as the disappointed man turned to leave. "Thanks anyway, Tony. Good luck with your new discovery or whatever, Bruce." Bruce started a bit, unaware his presence had even been registered.

"Oh, thanks Clint. I appreciate it." He smiled to the man in the doorway who now shifted his eyes from one scientist to the other.

"Don't mention it," he said, stepping through the door. Then he turned and added, "Oh, and don't worry. I won't mention this either." Bruce's eyes grew wide.

"What did you see?" Tony blurted, sitting upright in his chair. Clint shrugged.

"Just this apparent aftermath." He tilted his head and sighed at Tony. "Come on, man. Hawkeye? I've got observational skills or whatever. That's kind of my thing. It's not just for aiming arrows, you know? How do you think I've managed to keep up a relationship with Nat? Gotta be vigilent." He squinted and tapped his temple knowingly. Bruce remained silent, clearly mortified. He tried to meet Tony's eye again but he was busy glaring threateningly at Clint. "Anyway," Clint continued with a shrug, "Do what you want, guys. I won't tell anyone if you don't want them to know. Just, ya know, save me some blueberries next time."


	2. Scar Tissue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony spend a bit of time together in the infirmary for some much needed healing and recuperation.

“No. Absolutely not.” Natasha glared sternly at Clint. He offered a baffled shrug in response. “When I said ‘suit and tie affair,’ precisely what was it that made you think a fake tux t-shirt would cut it?” Clint snorted.

“Worth a shot, though, right?” Natasha declined to respond and went to see if Steve was ready to go. “Yeah, good call!” he shouted to her back. “I’ll go make sure the nerds made it past their lab coats! Get it? Cause,” he trailed off as the door slid shut. “Aww man,” he muttered to himself as he walked away. He found Bruce, Tony, and Thor in the kitchen.

“Tonight, I shall honor my ancestors!” Thor threw back a goblet of ale emphatically.

“Sorry, Thor,” Bruce patted the majestic god gently on the shoulder. “But tonight we shall be soberly keeping watch. It may be a party, but Stark Industries has a lot of enemies and Tony’s putting himself in a risky position getting out on that stage. Natasha and Clint are on intel, Steve is on crowd security, and I’m going to need you to help with defense if anything goes wrong.” Tony cracked open a beer and slid it across the countertop to Thor.

“Hey man, lighten up.” He smirked at Bruce. “I’ll be fine. I’m making the big entrance in the suit- everybody loves a good Iron Man entrance- and then we’ll all get hammered! Oh yeah, this guy knows what I’m talking about it.” Tony flashed a few finger-guns in Thor’s direction before turning to face Bruce. He placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “I’m throwing this party for you, man! You’ve made some major breakthroughs and you deserve to let off a little steam.” Bruce rolled his eyes.

“Right, like my idea of a good time isn’t literally the farthest you could possibly get from ‘party atmosphere.’ We all know this is just an excuse for you to get wasted and party in the suit.”

“Yeah, okay, you got me. So it’s, uh, crowd immersion therapy.” He clapped Bruce on the back with a laugh. “No really though, Bruce. You need to take a moment to celebrate how far you’ve come. Think about all your hard work in the lab!” Lowering his voice, he leaned in to the doctor’s ear and added, “All our hard work” with a wink. Bruce blushed and turned to face Tony so Thor wouldn’t see. Despite Tony’s readiness to make sly jokes, he was just as unsure of himself as Bruce was when they came face to face. He smiled, but avoided real eye contact. Bruce adjusted his bowtie with care.

“You two all straightened up for the party?” Clint asked. Then he furrowed his brow and suddenly added, “Oh, uh. Is that offensive? I didn’t- I mean, it’s not-” This time Bruce and Tony had no qualms making precise eye contact just before shooting a synchronized glare in Clint’s direction. Tony already had blueberries in hand, ready for launch when Steve and Natasha walked in.

“Everybody ready to go?” Steve asked.

“Yes!” Bruce and Tony answered in tandem, a little too enthusiastically. The handful of blueberries rolled across the counter and Clint snatched one as it went over the edge.

“Let’s do it,” he said, popping the blueberry in his mouth.

The soiree was big, flashy, and way out of Bruce’s comfort zone. He hovered around the edges and kept himself grounded with a firm grip on his cup of water. Unsure whether to keep a closer eye on the crowd, the stage, or the open ceiling through which Tony was meant to arrive, Bruce kept his watch anxiously shifting in all directions. Despite his attempted vigilance, he nonetheless failed to see Thor approach from behind until the tipsy god’s arm was wrapped firmly around his shoulders.

“What is this you drink?” he bellowed, eyeing Bruce’s now half-spilt cup. “Ah ha! Natasha has taught me of Russia’s legendary vodka!” Bruce laughed.

“Just water for me tonight,” he replied.

“What? Why do you not rejoice with us?” Thor’s indignant outrage was somewhat dampened by his unsteady footing. “Is not our revelry in celebration of your own glorious victory over the emerald curse you bear?” Bruce finally allowed himself to relax a little.

“It’s not victory, per se. Just progress, but yeah, you’re right. Even if Tony’s ultimate motive is always his own chance to show off, this sure was an awful lot of effort just to get me out of the lab for an evening.” He smiled up at the stage, all decked out in red and gold for Tony’s arrival. Somehow, despite the ridiculous self-congratulatory spectacle, Bruce couldn’t help feeling a little flattered.

“That’s the spirit!” Thor shouted, slamming his own glass ineffectually against Bruce’s water cup and disappearing into the crowd. The orchestra music was just beginning to swell when Bruce turned to see the first explosion rattle the hall. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear screams and sense the cloud of chaos swirling around him, but his senses were suddenly locked entirely on that roof through which Tony still had yet to enter. That’s when the second bomb went off. Amid the pluming rubble falling from the rafters, Bruce caught sight of a glimmer of red. And then everything went green.

______

Tony awoke to what he thought was his own heartbeat reverberating through his skull. There was a certain comfort in the dull and steady quake of life pulsing through the body with such urgency that it filled his ears, rattled teeth, and throbbed across his temples. Tony’s mind held logic at bay just long enough for him to melt momentarily into the serene memory of a natural heart. The fleeting sensation of an unmediated connection of heart and body gave him a rare peace. It wasn’t until he allowed himself a slow and deep inhale that the familiar strain of his tissues around the metal clamps and hinges drilled into his sternum reminded him that the natural heartbeat he once knew had been encased in machinery and drowned out by the reactor’s hum long ago. But the thumping didn’t stop. Reality started to bleed back in as Tony pried his eyes open and the fuzzy image of his helmet’s internal display drifted into focus. Some kind of warning light was flashing in time with the thump. He tried to focus on finding the diagnostic readouts that should be scrolling across his field of vision, but all he could see was a flashing green. What was the green warning light for? Focus. Why are there no readouts or altimeters or JARVIS?

“JARVIS?” His own voice shot through his aching head like an echo ricocheting around a tin can. A distant response came from the muffled exterior of the suit.

“Knock, knock, metal man!” The realization came over him in waves with each rattling thump. There was no green warning light. His helmet monitor was down. The flashing green was literally just his field of vision through the inactive faceplate. The booming voice accompanying the alternating green and black confirmed Tony’s assessment of the situation and he puffed out a sigh of relief as he reoriented himself. “Metal man wake now!”

“Yes, okay, hello, I’m up,” Tony patted the ground in a short radius before sitting up and steadying himself against his elbows. “Now would you quit poking my face so I can open up?” Tony retracted the faceplate and found himself face-to-finger with the big, green incarnation of his fellow scientist. “What happened, Hulk?” he asked, letting his head fall back to take in the full view.

“Building crash. Metal man fall. Hulk catch.” Tony smiled. Maybe they should have The Hulk submit the mission summary reports to Fury. He had to admit, the monster version was certainly more succinct than the man.

“Thanks, Hulk. It’s always a comfort to know I can count on you. You may not be as articulate as Bruce, but I trust you as much as I do him.” The Hulk sat down on the pavement beside Tony with the gentle poise of a car wreck.

“Bruce not trust Hulk,” he sighed, slowly shaking his head. Tony raised an eyebrow at him.

“Do you ever feel weird talking about Bruce like that?” He shifted his weight forward and made finger-quotes in the air around “Bruce” as he spoke. Hulk tilted his head to one side. “It’s just, you act like you’re two completely different people. And like, yeah, there’s a divide; I get that. But do you ever think how much he’s a part of you and you’re a part of him?” As Tony watched the massive green face contort into a contemplative grimace, it occurred to him that, just in considering the question, The Hulk showed real glimpses of Bruce’s inquiring scientific mind. He opened his mouth to respond, but was suddenly distracted by the natural hue returning to his fingertips. For once, Tony was surprised to find himself somewhat disappointed at the return to normalcy. He wondered if Bruce would remember what he’d said to The Hulk. Perhaps, if he did the question might answer itself.

 

Despite all Bruce’s efforts, Tony refused to sit still in the infirmary. He batted a gentle hand away from his wrapped shoulder and reached for a monitor projection, straining the injury in the process. Fresh blood seeped through the bandages. Bruce sighed.

“Tony. Just sit still for two minutes. This gash isn’t too bad, but it will only get worse if you keep ripping it back open so carelessly.” Tony glanced at his shoulder and shrugged. A bead of blood squeezed out of the soaked bandage and trickled down his arm in response. He made a face that was neither altogether apologetic nor entirely concerned. Meeting Bruce’s eye, the half-smile fell more into the realm of sincerely apologetic.

“Sometimes you gotta be a little careless, man.” He returned his gaze to the monitor he had expanded before him and began running diagnostics on the reactor. “Keeps me on my toes. You should try it sometime!” Bruce laughed as he rewrapped Tony’s arm.

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to live life on my toes?” Bruce didn’t look up from Tony’s wound, but raised an eyebrow and smirked as he spoke. Tony continued to gesture rapidly at the monitors as he pretended not to know precisely what Bruce was getting at.

“Ah yes, your prestigious ballet career. How’s that going for you there, Brucey?” He jabbed the doctor in the side and laughed. Bruce chuckled and secured the new bandage in place.

“Oh, you know…” His voice trailed off for a moment as his eyes settled on Tony’s bare chest. The scar tissue around the edges of the arc reactor was not as pristine as the sleek shell of the Iron Man suit might suggest. Although the core’s upgrade from palladium kept Tony running without risk of blood poisoning, the remnants of his struggle with the toxicity remained in a few darkened vessels branching out in unnaturally rigid angles. The damaged vessels disappeared under the warped scar tissue which bunched up into an irregular pattern of ridges and crevices encircling the mechanism. Still distracted by his diagnostics report, Tony didn’t notice as Bruce’s fingertips delicately traced the nerve-damaged tissue. It occurred to him how fragile Tony was. The suit, the arrogant façade, it was all just scar tissue encasing a broken man. Better a shell of scars than an exposed nerve.

Bruce was jolted back from his thoughts as the image of the explosion shot through his memory. Cheers and flash bulbs turned to screams and fire as the first bomb took out what should’ve been Tony’s landing on the gala stage. Steve had immediately gone into evacuation mode and ensured that the party guests all made it safely out and away from the building, but Bruce calculated quickly that the explosion radius had likely sent rubble in Tony’s direction as he came in. When the second explosion came from above, all it took was that glimpse of red amid the crumbling scaffolding to send Bruce into rescue mode. He reacted with all instinct so that even when the Hulk shredded all semblances of logic and reason along with his now tattered new suit, the prime objective to get Tony out of there remained the sole focus of his muddled mind. Bruce’s memory cut out with a fade to green and drifted back through murky waters to find Tony sitting beside him in the street, his faceplate open and a look of curiosity in his eyes.

“Did you ask me something?” Bruce murmured, almost to himself. Tony looked up at him.

“Yeah, I said ‘Can I put my shirt back on now?’” Bruce shook his head.

“No, I mean, yes, you can put your shirt back on.” Tony narrowed his eyes at the doctor, not breaking his gaze as he pulled the Black Sabbath shirt over his head. The arc reactor glowed faintly through the thin fabric. After a moment, Bruce continued. He spoke slowly, as though following a lose thread with careful dexterity for fear any sudden movement may unravel the tapestry on the other end. “Had you asked me- or rather, him- something? After we got out of the wreckage?” Tony’s eyes gleamed. Seeing Bruce reach for the memory lodged between his own mind and that of the Hulk was like witnessing a sacred epiphany. The pursuit of scientific discovery was invigorating enough, but to come to a greater understanding of self in the process was something beyond value. Perhaps the only thing more valuable than the inexplicable experience of that moment of self-discovery was Bruce and Tony’s capacity to share it with one another.

“Yeah, we had a little chat,” Tony answered, careful not to disrupt Bruce’s chance to remember it for himself. He waited expectantly and considered how he might encourage him. He swung his legs off the table and let them dangle over the edge beside Bruce. When the doctor didn’t respond, he decided it was safe to prompt him. “When you say ‘after we got out,’ who exactly are you referring to?” He leaned casually back on his arm as he spoke in an attempt to keep the conversation from feeling like an interrogation. In reality, all he managed to do was irritate his shoulder, which casually proceeded to bleed again. Bruce rolled his eyes and pulled back the sleeve to look. He furrowed his brow. Looking back up to meet Tony’s eye, he replied.

“Now that you ask, I guess I don’t exactly know.” As he spoke, Bruce placed his hand on Tony’s back and guided the wrapped arm forward with his own, supporting him so he would take the weight off his injury. “I’m sure I just meant you and me.” The last three words lingered in the air. The comfort of Bruce’s arms around him dissolved Tony’s already waning recollection of the pain in his shoulder into nothing. The two scientists leaned into one another gently until Tony’s head was nearly settled against Bruce’s shoulder. The doctor took a deep breath and the soft cotton of his lab coat rustled against the curve of Tony’s cheek. The touch made him want to give up the fight and melt into Bruce’s embrace, but the sight of the gauze and antiseptic on the table reminded him of the progress they were on the verge of completely derailing. Now it was Tony’s turn to help Bruce heal.

“Nah, see, I don’t think you are so sure of that!” Tony blurted, cocking his head to the side and craning his neck slightly to meet Bruce’s eye. Bruce was a little taken aback, but responded calmly to Tony’s reinstated conversation nonetheless.

“Oh no?”

“No.” Torn between frustration for the moment he’d had to let pass and excitement for Bruce to really make a breakthrough, Tony was well past tiptoeing around Bruce’s self-guided epiphany. “I don’t think that plural was about how many people came out of that wreckage; I think it was about how many people went in.” Bruce folded his arms and took a step back.

“Okay,” he said slowly, inviting elaboration. Tony was unsure whether the hesitation to respond was indicative of Bruce’s anxiety or confusion, but he intended to get the doctor to open up either way.

“I think, somewhere along the line, you stopped thinking of yourself as one man with two bodies and started dissociating yourself into two men fighting over one life.” Bruce tilted his head to the side and relaxed his stance as though processing a response, but Tony carried on unabated. “But that ‘other guy’ you’re always on about is still you! And you know what? That you cares about this you! Maybe he spit out that bullet because you were still in the back of his mind, asking him to. Just like when he ran into that building to find me. You’re still in that head somewhere for him as much as he’s in the back of your mind now.” Bruce said nothing. He furrowed his brow and avoided Tony’s brutally honest gaze.

“I just wish I could have my life back,” he finally sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like to live in constant fear of your own body’s betrayal.” Tony barely had to raise an eyebrow before Bruce met his eye and realized what he’d said. He quickly looked away and fumbled awkwardly with the roll of gauze in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, I know it’s gotta be tough feeling like you’ve lost all control, and I don’t blame you for wanting to distance yourself from that, but maybe you should try identifying with that side of yourself a little more. Trust it a little more.” The doctor glared sharply up at him.

“Why should I trust him?” his tone dropped its usual tranquility in a dangerous flash of rage. His hand tightened into a fist around the roll of gauze. Tony kept his eyes locked on Bruce and spoke with a calm assertiveness.

“Because he trusts you.” Bruce didn’t respond for a few moments as he processed the implications of Tony’s words. The gauze rolled out of the doctor’s hand and his jaw slackened as the memory of The Hulk’s thought found its way into the forefront of his mind. He looked through Tony at nothing in particular and let out a long, slow breath. With a look of confounded surprise, Bruce met Tony’s eyes again.

“Yes, he does.”

 

The two men held one another’s gaze for a quiet moment. Tony’s feet dangled off the table between them. Despite the profound shock still working its way across Bruce’s expression, Tony simply smiled back at him, swelling with pride for the doctor’s new connection. He relished the intimacy of sharing this moment with Bruce. Usually, such a discovery sent the doctor into a distracted frenzy of note-taking and analysis. But this time it was different. This time it was a synapse of Bruce’s enigmatic mind that the two scientists had worked together to cross. Tony was considering the appropriateness of a comment about being the axon to Bruce’s dendrite when the stillness was abruptly broken by a clamoring of machinery and sudden flash of light. The whole lab went dark.

“Dammit, Dum-E!” He turned his head sharply to scold the clumsy robot, but couldn’t see across the lab in the darkness. A low melancholic buzz from the direction of the circuit breaker confirmed that the message was nonetheless received. When Tony turned back around, he was stricken with the vision of Bruce illuminated in the arc reactor’s blue glow. He marveled at the calming contentedness in the doctor’s gentle eyes and hoped it was borne of the evening’s successful discovery and not simply a façade to mask the fear and anger below.

“Be careful of your shoulder,” Bruce began, reaching an arm around Tony’s waist to help him down. As he leaned closer into the light at Tony’s chest, Bruce couldn’t help recalling the inviting patterns of invigorating life decorating the skin just below the thin black fabric. Something in the very tips of his fingers was fighting a losing battle against the urge to caress those scars until the edges of Tony’s nerve-damaged façade broke down and let unmediated, liberating waves of sensation back into his fortified heart. He cautiously placed his other hand on Tony’s hip, just below the Sabbath shirt’s rumpled hem. Their eyes met again for a moment and the smile returned to Tony’s face. Bruce let his hand drift up across perfect abs until he met with the imperfect ridges fusing the man to his mechanical core. As the doctor’s gentle touch faded with the dwindling nerve endings surrounding his heart, Tony couldn’t help reasserting himself in a slightly more emboldened move. Bruce jolted at the unexpected touch of Tony’s legs as he wrapped them around the doctor’s thighs and pulled him close against the table. Bruce smirked and gingerly lifted the hem of the Sabbath shirt, to which Tony enthusiastically obliged, swiftly abandoning any remaining concern for his injury as he pulled the thin fabric over his head. 

There was something more than awe-inspiring about the arc reactor. The imperfect seams between man and machine told a story of survival. It was a struggle Bruce knew so well within himself that the glowing ring held out, not only a beacon of hope to his own heart, but a window into Tony’s. Bruce wrapped his arms around him and rested his cheek gently on the reactor’s surface. For its harsh metallic appearance juxtaposed against Tony’s flesh, the mechanism was surprisingly warm. The low hum combined with the inviting warmth to create a sublime calm. Though Bruce knew well enough that the heat was the result of the high-energy electron flux sustained within the core’s internal circuit, he wondered how much of Tony’s own body heat was involved in the circuitry. Scientific curiosity began to tempt the doctor out of the reactor’s transcendent aura as he began to puzzle out the biological implications of the core’s heat on Tony’s circulatory system. Sensing the onset of Bruce’s psychological isolation, Tony brought him back into the moment with a gentle hand running fingers through his ruffled hair. Bruce closed his eyes and sighed wordless approval as Tony massaged his scalp.

Tony thought back on the spontaneous kiss they had shared in the lab as he tangled his fingers in the doctor’s hair. Neither of them had found the courage or the words to discuss what had happened, so the last few weeks had been accented with more than a little awkward tension around the tower. Although they still had yet to talk it through, Tony found himself reassured in this moment; free from the anxiety of labeling their affection or explaining themselves to the others, but simply contented just to hold each other. He took a deep breath and gently nestled his palm in Bruce’s hair. Their embrace was suspended in stillness. As Tony exhaled, Bruce could just hear the distant beat of his heart through the serene hum of the reactor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this felt kind of choppy and disconnected. I'll admit I didn't totally know where I was going with it and I wrote it in chunks on several trains and buses. I hope you like it nonetheless! Thank you so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh, you guys. This is my very first attempt at fanfic. I'm a bit nervous about it, but I'm also proud of it thus far. Still debating if I want to keep going on this one, or try out a different relationship. I don't know! I hope you like it though! Either way, it's a nice break from academic writing any day. Thanks for reading it!


End file.
